Development dispute leads to a coup in historic...

1of48The inventory of available homes, which measures the average time it takes for a home to be sold if no new homes are listed, was 3.6 months in October. A six-month inventory indicates a balance between buyers and sellers.Photo: Staff file photo

2of48File photo of an SAISD property GrayStreet Partners plans to develop on Government Hill, near the Pearl. A group of Government Hill residents are fighting some of the changes and want to oust the current neighborhood association board at their next meeting later this month.Photo: William Luther /San Antonio Express-News

3of48Take a look at the city neighborhoods that Niche named the Best Places to Live in 2018 in the San Antonio area in the slideshow ahead.Photo: FILE

The Monday night meeting of the Government Hill Alliance Neighborhood Association was canceled, according to a sign taped to the door of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church by Rose Hill, who may or may not be the association’s president, depending on whom you ask.

Within seconds, a resident of the neighborhood tore down the sign. Hill taped up another, and someone else emerged from the church to rip it down.

Concerns about runaway development and rising property taxes have created a constitutional crisis in the neighborhood association for Government Hill, a historic area bordering downtown and the Pearl that is one of the fastest-growing parts of the urban core.

Nearly 50 local residents met at St. Patrick’s on Monday night and voted to replace the association’s board. They accuse Hill and other board members of being too friendly with developers and failing to notify residents of construction projects that have been proposed in the 130-year-old neighborhood, a mixture of colorful bungalows, weedy lots and neglected Victorian mansions.

“We’re at a vital point right now where we can go forward or we can go backward. So we need to be prepared, we need to unite,” said Denise Gutierrez Homer, who helped lead Monday’s meeting, where she was elected to the new board. “We’re getting together, we’re meeting our neighbors again.”

Those who attended voted 26-0 to elect a new board that includes Joe Ashcraft, who previously served as the association’s president between 2010 and 2014 and who was on the board until last year. Some attendees didn’t vote because they weren’t members of the neighborhood association.

The recent surge of development in San Antonio’s urban core has divided many neighborhood associations — earlier this month, the new president of the Dignowity Hill Neighborhood Association purged all six members of its Architectural Review Committee, which is in charge of meeting with developers to go over construction plans. The committee had played a big role in the struggle over a controversial five-story apartment complex proposed next to the Hays Street Bridge.

Other neighborhoods, including Tobin Hill and Mahncke Park, have had contentious debates over whether to become historic in order to gain more control over development.

Ashcraft said that the Government Hill residents who attended Monday’s meeting were authorized to elect a new board under Texas state law for nonprofits. But Hill called the meeting “illegal” and said the vote wasn’t valid because it wasn’t called by the association’s board members.

“They think we’re in cahoots with the developers, but we’re not,” she said. “I am holding my ground with my board of directors because the bottom line is we haven’t done anything.”

District 2 City Councilman William “Cruz” Shaw, whose district includes Government Hill, didn’t respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. Representatives of the board elected Monday met with someone from the staff of state Rep. Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, on Tuesday. He said in an interview that he wasn’t the one to decide which board is legitimate.

“I don’t doubt that these people did their homework, but I’m not the arbiter,” he said.

Tensions were high at the meeting: Hill stood in the back filming it on her cell phone, and she called the police out of fear that things would get out of hand. Two officers arrived, but they didn’t have much to do, and they ended up partaking in the buffet of cookies and fruit that had been provided.

A developer’s plan to build three townhomes with ground-level parking garages on a vacant lot near the crossing of Carson Street and Pierce Avenue brought the neighborhood to a boiling point. Opponents of the project say they collected 250 signatures against it but that the neighborhood association’s board supported it anyway.

Hill said that members of the neighborhood association voted 48-8 in favor of that project at a meeting in March after negotiating with the developers to reduce the number of residential units down from eight.

Another major concern among those who voted for the new board is that Government Hill’s neighborhood plan is being overridden for the sake of the city’s SA Tomorrow plan, which was adopted in 2016 to manage population growth.

Local developer GrayStreet Partners is working on plans to build a massive mixed-use project on 23 acres of neglected land across Broadway from the Pearl. But those who elected the new board aren’t worried about that project because of GrayStreet’s reputation as a “reputable, classy developer,” Tower said.

The board that was elected Monday plans to meet this week to decide who will serve as the neighborhood association’s president and other officers, Tower said. Hill said she will continue operating the neighborhood association as if Monday’s vote didn’t happen.

“We have more transparency in this neighborhood association than they ever had,” she said. “What they’re looking for is control.”

Next week, the association Hill leads will hold a town hall to discuss property taxes.

Richard Webner is the real estate reporter for the Express-News. He moved to the beat in spring 2016, after spending about a year covering retail, hotels, tourism and manufacturing. Before coming to San Antonio, he was a business reporter at the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, and he had internships at the Chicago Tribune and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, as well as the Express-News in summer 2013. He earned a graduate degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and an undergraduate degree in History from Northwestern University. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio but has had the good fortune to live all over the United States.